Six student members of
the school-sponsored COGS technology club and two teachers, Al Lovati and Debbie
Squire, joined me in attending the National Federation of the Blind 2004 Convention
in Atlanta, Georgia. Al Lovati is a technology teacher and the ISB technology
coordinator from the Indiana School for the Blind. Debbie Squire teaches high
school math. I am a professor at Butler University in Indianapolis, and I volunteer
at the school. Of the students, four were female and two were male. The ages
ranged from twelve to seventeen. Each student had to write and submit three
essays to attend this trip and each student had a responsibility to speak to
some group at the convention. For some students the task of writing the essays
and the idea of speaking was relatively simple, and for others it represented
a significant stretch.

Our time in Atlanta was
relatively evenly split between attending the Convention and non-convention
activities. Our non-convention activities included shopping, dining, visiting
the zoo, taking advantage of hotel amenities, and exploring the city.

What We
Did

We arrived on Monday night.
After checking into the hotel, the students were introduced to three leaders
of the NFB before we even left the lobby. This was typical of what happened
throughout the convention. The students and teachers met many of the NFB leadership.
On Tuesday morning, four students spoke at the Parent’s Division meeting about
their experience as blind teens. We all attended the Braille Carnival. In the
afternoon we explored the city a bit, checking out the underground mall and
the Coke exhibit building nearby. In the evening we attended the rookie round-up
at the convention.

Wednesday was our planned
“play day.” We took the subway and a bus out to the zoo. Later in the day, one
student (a boy) came back to the convention with me and the rest of the group
took the subway to a more distant mall to shop. At the convention, the student
and I attended the mock trial and the student division meeting.

Thursday morning we visited
the exhibit area in the morning. In the afternoon the students were first on
the agenda to present to the computer science division. I asked the students
to stay through the next presentation, which was a highly technical presentation
on the next major operating system release from Microsoft. The presentation
was technically over my head, and way over the students’ heads. They reported
that it was boring, and completely incomprehensible. To quote one girl, “Oh
my gosh!!! I didn’t understand one thing he said.” I impressed upon them that
their role in attending was to learn how the business of the organization was
conducted, not to understand the technical information from Microsoft. After
that conversation, the students reported that they learned a lot about how the
blind are treated and how the NFB does things, and why. After leaving the computer
science meeting, we visited the exhibit area a bit longer. At 4:00 pm a male
member of the Student Division had a short “mentor” meeting with our two male
students. Later in the evening we ordered pizza for the our students and four
college students joined them for dinner at about 5:00 and stayed with them until
6:45 at which time we went to the play put on by the Louisiana Center.

On Friday we attended the
general sessions all day and went out for a nice dinner in the evening. We left
early on Saturday morning for home.

Results
on the Students

The entire experience was
noticeably powerful for the students. The simple act of flying from Indianapolis
to Atlanta, and the dining experiences were good practice for several of the
students. Two students had never flown before and only two of the students seemed
fully comfortable and confident in a nice restaurant. The city exploration was
also useful. Two students reported that they had never ridden a city bus and
only one had ever been on a subway. Each child had a daily maximum of $40 for
food and they had to maintain a record of their food expenses. This was useful
to point out that going down the block to McDonalds is very different from eating
in the hotel restaurant. The students got that message after the very first
day.

Of the six students, one
was totally blind and the remaining five had varying levels of vision. Only
the one youth brought a cane. Mrs. Cheadle talked with the students a couple
of times and as a result each of them did take a cane offered to them from the
parent’s division cane bank. Once they had them, they carried and used them.
Especially in the convention meetings, they seemed to want to have a cane, since
almost everyone had one.

The speaking opportunities
for the students were very beneficial. Each of the students reported being nervous
about it, yet each one came through and did what was expected. At least one
student surprised himself with what he could do in this arena. I judged the
speaking experiences to be invaluable experience for each of the students.

The pizza party we arranged
was extremely positive. In fact, we had intended to end it sooner to allow time
for our students to get ready to attend the play, but as we overheard what the
college students were saying to our students, we let the session run as long
as we could. There were positive messages and challenges from the college students
and our students were strongly engaged with them.

The chance meetings with
various NFB leaders were extremely powerful. One chance meeting and conversation
was particularly powerful and begs retelling. After we checked into the hotel
and before we even left the lobby, we ran across Dr. Z and a couple of other
NFB leaders. An hour or so earlier, one of the students had mentioned that she
thought the airport was inaccessible because the TV monitors with flight information
were too high for her to read. I asked her to mention this to Dr. Z and she
did. Dr. Z’s response was that the NFB believes that in some cases the blind
need to change and not the world. She said that it is pretty hard to change
airports and that it is not that hard to ask for help. This was a good message
for the students and this conversation was discussed in more detail later. My
point here is that the many chance meetings with NFB leadership and short yet
powerful conversations can have surprisingly strong results.

We required the students
to attend part of one of the divisions meetings. This allowed the students to
experience the NFB’s work first hand. The students got a lot out of that, but
much of it needed guided reflection. I believe that if the students simply attended
the meeting, they would have walked away and said, “how weird.” With a short
debriefing meeting in the hallway afterwards, we helped the students see the
issues that were in play and the importance of those issues. The meeting was
only the set-up for their learning, and the hallway conversation was when the
learning actually occurred.

When asked what parts of
the convention they liked best, the students all mentioned Dr. Marc Maurer’s
report. The totally blind student, who was the youngest of the group at 12 years
old, said that she didn’t know all those things were going on. At the time she
said she felt something but couldn’t put it into words. On the way home, while
eating lunch in Chicago she piped up and said, “I know what I felt. I felt confident
that I could do anything that I wanted to try.” Other favorites ranged across
all the various activities, including the mentor conversations, the play, the
exhibit area, and the woman who spoke from the Small Business Administration.
When asked what they liked least they all said the same thing—they didn’t like
having to sit for a long time, like for the roll call of the states. Some of
the students also mentioned the session with the Microsoft representative.

All the students talked
with enthusiasm about attending next year. They suggested getting very involved
with the Braille carnival and they suggested talking to other committees like
the education committee. They also thought they could be volunteers, helping
people find rooms and things.

My final thought is that
the outcome of our trip to the NFB 2004 convention was ultimately so valuable
to the students that I believe it is critical that this opportunity become available
to a wider group of students from residential schools throughout the country.